


Good Morning, Sunshine!

by Volrosso



Series: Like a Crowbar to the Brain EP [3]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: M/M, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-22 21:05:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9625328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volrosso/pseuds/Volrosso
Summary: "In the grand scheme of things we really are irrelevant," Cherri says quietly. "Specks of dust alone on the edge of infinity, revolving around the sun."





	

**Author's Note:**

> There is a non consensual kiss that happens in this, and maybe implications of that sort of thing happening to the character before so just be aware of that! No details, but. Just in case. 
> 
> Anyways hi, long time no see huh?

When he lived in the city, everyone was always expressing their concern for Ángel, how they _truly_ hoped that he and his brother hadn't inherited their parents' sickness.

For the longest time, neither of them had understood that all the adults around them knew more about their past than they did, couldn't figure out what that was supposed to _mean_. Neither of the boys got sick often, and they'd never even really heard anyone talk about the specifics of their parent's illness. Was it hereditary? Was it contagious? Was it _inevitable?_   

Home after horrible home, it went on. Ángel and his brother would sit on the other side of the glass in the big corporate building they lived in more often than not, watching their overburdened case worker trying to auction them off to another pair of kind-hearted adults. Or adults that would pretend they cared, at least, shaking their heads in a pitying way as they snuck sympathetic glances at the scared children on the other side of the window. Outsiders that worried about them, poor babies. Poor, unlovable street-rat children, riddled with a pathetic past and more emotional baggage than any kid should be lugging around at that age. Back then, neither of them understood the tragedy of their own existence.

Eventually, it started making a lot more sense.

Things started clicking into place when Ángel lost his brother. They were twins, two sides of the same coin that were never meant to be on their own. Ángel was always perceived to be the better of the two, the well behaved one deserving of respect in a way his stubborn, over energetic brother would never be. When adults decided they wanted to help the twins, it was really just Ángel they wanted, and then they'd get annoyed with the package deal they were handed instead. Ángel was the kind of kid they wanted to save, not his brother. His hopeless brother, who was destined to turn out just how his parents did, that was what everyone said. Ángel was the one who was going places, who'd live a happy life, who'd shake his past and become somebody.

As soon as he got out in the desert, he started understanding all of that. And in that, he started proving everyone wrong.

Life out in the desert wasn't so complicated. There were no cryptic caretakers standing around, whispering about him, the poor tragedy-on-two-legs in their care, locked in for a life with his awful failure of a brother and the legacy of his deadbeat junkie parents.

Nobody talked about Ángel in the desert, because out there he stopped being a _somebody_. He hadn't been a somebody in a long time.

In a way, he felt bad for the suckers that stopped by the colony sometimes for a laugh, the outsiders who came by just to be cruel. The outsiders rolled up from time to time to say awful things and blast them with water- and occasionally ray guns, calling it a mercy. But the outsiders were the real tragedies out here, those poor saps who thought that the were worth _anything_ , that thought they were powerful enough to go against the grain and fight back against the machine.  

The city was something that lived and breathed, like a beast looming over them. It wasn't something that a pack of technicolour teens could throw fists at until it buckled. It was impenetrable, especially from out here, where they were all- sometimes literally- living in its shadow.

The city was something that stayed with you. Ángel felt it in the back of his head at night, felt the pull of his disastrously short life there. He'd been a tragic little boy then, just him and his brother versus the world. Now it would be different. They were older, they'd be able to take care of themselves without adults stepping in and telling them otherwise. The city was now a promise of something better, something clean and safe. Perfect numbness. It would be so much easier to be nobody there.

As Ángel figured out in his time in the desert, there was a lot of comfort in being a nobody. Being a nobody made it easier to drift from existence. When people didn't know who you were, they had no power over you. If you came so far that you ran out of people to care about, then you became like the city- totally impenetrable. Not necessarily strong, not very powerful, but untouchable all the same.

Was it lonely? Maybe. Ángel didn't think about it much anymore, unless he was dreaming of a life where him and his brother were still together and finally happy. Otherwise, the city was just a blur, a smear on the edges of his good memories, which were already few and far between. Slowly but surely, Ángel was overwriting his own history with his dreams. He was making up a better life for himself, one where things turned out fine for all of them.

That was the foundation of his dreams, at least. They changed from day to day. Sometimes it was him alone in the desert, surrounded by spirits who talked to him about the world, what it was like where you went after you died. Sometimes it was just him and his brother as kings in a far off land, or heroes in the fairy tales he barely remembered from when they were kids. Sometimes it was just them all as a regular family- the sort of family they always craved. Him and his brother and his parents, all together. No getting uprooted every few months, no getting separated.

Ángel didn't really know what his brother would look like now- hardly remembered his name anymore. He hardly remembered his own, some days. It was one of the only things anchoring hims to his body, something that was easy to let go of when you were drifting out of space and time.

Most people out here in the colony let go of their names first thing, and with that they let go of every bad thing that had ever happened to them, shaking off the city and leaving it behind. Over time, the good things started slipping through your fingers like sand as well, but that was also just a part of life.

That was how they lived out in the desert.

Ángel's days blurred together when he wasn't paying attention sometimes. Time was weird in that way- sometimes it was a distant thought, sometimes he was painfully aware of it. At the moment, it was ticking by, dripping like molasses, and he couldn't will it to go any faster. He held his blistered hands out in front of him in the cool evening air, watching as it slipped through cracks in his fingers. The sky flicked through its fading colours all around him, settling on an inky black split through with silver beams of moonlight.

There was nothing to do at the colony at night. There was no high you could get from the moon, so Ángel generally forced his weary body to shut down for a couple of hours while the sun was down, allowing himself to slip into _real_ dreams full of magic in the desert and ghosts in the sun.

The cycle started again in the morning.

His hands blurred more than usual, and Ángel blinked a few times to try and clear his head from whatever memories had popped up just there so he could go back to relaxing.

The desert was usually eerily quiet around this part at night. And cooler, but only just. Even so, Ángel would be shivering soon, like he always was when someone who was worse off was using his ratty blanket. Being out in the sun all day did things to one's cold tolerance.

Everyone in the colony was the same way- those that had been out here longer were the worst though. Lorelei was one of them, the one currently wrapped up in Ángel's dusty, threadbare blanket on the lounge chair beside him. She was moving around, and Ángel looked over as much as he could without straining his neck to see what was up.

Lorelei swept what was left of her ratty brown hair over her shoulder as she sat up, painstakingly slow. She took another moment to catch her breath before she got up to her feet. Moving around at night was a lot easier for people like them at night, but it wasn't something Ángel felt bothered to try right then. He couldn't feel half his body anyways.

"Pretty sure it's your turn to go," Lorelei croaked, breaking off and coughing like that would do anything to clear her desert dry throat. Ángel couldn't even really summon up the energy to respond, so Lorelei just rolled her eyes and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "You do the run tomorrow, then."      

Ángel probably wouldn't even be aware of it when tomorrow started. He was hardly ever aware of those things- hadn't even caught when today ended. It was just dark all of a sudden. And he didn't remember yesterday, or the day before, and trying to made him sleepy.  

He listened to Lorelei's shuffling footsteps and the drag of her bad foot against the earth as she made her way out of the colony, away from safety. Ángel's eyes fluttered shut, and he said a small prayer for Lorelei in his head, asking the spirits to protect her as he let go of everything and slipped into a real dream.

He ended up in a field of bright golden flowers, under a pale blue sky, and there was someone on the other side of the field waving their arms. They wanted him to come closer. But no matter how far Ángel walked, they were always too far.                 

At one point in his history, Ángel might have chased them. In the beginning days where he was still slightly afraid of the sun and the desert and the world as a whole, he had this dream a lot.

It was a bit different, he'd run until invisible forces grabbed his arms and dragged him back as he struggled, as rain began to pour down around them and the flowers wilted down into the cracked pavement and building blocked out the sky. He used to run until he couldn't anymore, because he recognized the person as someone he'd known, once upon a time.

Now that Ángel was a nobody, he didn't know them. He didn't bother, just stopped walking and laid down in the soft green grass and closed his eyes.

Nothing could hurt you if you closed your eyes. His brother had taught him that.

It might have been a day or a month or a whole year, Ángel couldn't really say, but he was aware that he'd been rudely awoken when the light hit his eyes. He was ripped violently out of his dreams, watching them dissipate in front of him in the scorching heat as his entire body ached and stung from the sudden movement. There was blood in his mouth and his face was wet, and all at once, Ángel was aware of how awful he felt. Breaking out of a deep dream like that was never pleasant, but Ángel was more concerned about whoever just poured water all over him than he was getting back. He tried to focus his eyes but his hair was dripping down into his face and his arms weren't listening right now.  

"Aw _fuck_ ," someone was saying, high and nasally. Someone he didn't know. Ángel knew all five voices of the people closest to him, generally hidden by the solar panels keeping them separated. This person was nobody from the colony. He couldn't process that much though, still hung up on the fact that his bed and all his clothes were soaked, and that he was fully aware of his body. Which was the _worst_ way to be.

"Oh, fuck, we got a live one. Get a load of this thing." Some guy was touching Ángel's face, and Ángel squeezed his eyes shut tight so he could block the outsider out, so he would stop existing. With any luck, this would be a nightmare, and the pain he felt as the outsider dug his fingers into Ángel's sore skin was fake. An illusion. Maybe Ángel would wake up soon. "Aw. Now, this is sad, don't you think? It's probably a looker under all this zombie flesh."

He kept digging his fingers in. Ángel ground his teeth and tried to keep totally still, but it hurt, fuck, _everything_ hurt.

"Don't touch them for fuck's sake," someone else was saying, and the guy trying to rip Ángel's skin off his face let go. Ángel's head hit the mattress and it was jarring- even that much made him dizzy. "They're sick, leave them alone."

"They're not sick, they're junkies," the cruel one spat, and Ángel curled up a little, in case he decided he wasn't done with him. "I mean, if they wanted to live like this, they coulda done in the city."

When Ángel chanced opening his eyes again, the guy was right there, up in his face. He was blurry around the edges with Ángel's bad vision, but Ángel could pick out that his eyes were covered up by ridiculous sunglasses, a red bandanna hanging loosely around his neck. Bright blue hair fell in greasy strands on either side of his face that was twisted up in a cruel grin. Ángel barely had time to take note of all that before the outsider was gripping his chin and forcing him to keep looking up, even with the strain it was putting on his poor eyes.  

"What's your name," the outsider sneered at him, and Ángel hadn't been this close to another human being in recent memory. He had no particular want for it either. "How'd you get here, roadkill?"

"Don't talk to it, you might get germs or something." Another colourful individual came over, a huge grin stretched over their pale face. Their eyes were hidden behind their thick goggles.

The blue haired guy made a face, and Ángel took a deep breath when the outsider let go of his face. He'd forgotten to breathe there for a moment.

"You got any water for us, zombie boy?" The blue haired guy may have backed up a little, but he was still too close. Either this pack of outsiders were new to the zones, or they were just cruel enough to ignore how things worked.

Ángel wanted to inform them all that the water was _theirs_ , that it belonged to the colony. These people, these... _kill boys_ or whatever they were calling themselves these days had no claim to it. The spirits granted them that much. Or at least, that was what Lorelei told Ángel once, when he'd asked.

He wanted to tell them anything that would make them go away, but this was a common occurrence and that had never worked. The outsiders that came here were mostly kids who ran off into the desert without knowing how to take care of themselves. The locals never came to the colony, unless they were twisted fucks looking for something to do. It never really mattered who someone was when they rolled in here, they didn't belong, and more importantly, they had _guns_. Nobody in the colony could fight them.  

This was going to be a very unpleasant day. 

"Ángel," he managed to say after a moment of dead silence, and the blue haired stranger flinched. 

"It talks? Holy fuck. Say something else," the other sneered, only to be yanked back and replaced by a red haired outsider who was probably their leader. 

"What do you mean," she snapped. "What does that mean?" 

"My name is Ángel," he said, a little louder as he propped himself up on his elbows with some difficulty. "Not zombie boy. _Ángel_." 

He shouldn't have been playing brave while all his muscles screamed at him in protest, but Ángel figured that the outsiders needed help, and didn't know what would happen if he didn't offer it. When outsiders came in, the colony always got roughed up in the process. Ángel wanted to keep that from happening, if he could help it. He could maybe keep them from killing people, or shooting anyone with their nefarious ray guns.

"It's like watching a zombie come back to life," the goggles one said, coming up behind the leader and peeking over her shoulder as Ángel stretched his legs out, lolling his head to the side. "You really don't suit your name, do you hothead?"

"Take it up with my parents, if you're that worried." Ángel took a deep breath before attempting to get up, struggling to his feet. He ignored the noises of disgust that came from his unwelcome companions as he did so.

"Might just, buttercup. They as ugly as you?"

"They're probably rotting in the ground, so I'd say it's a safe bet." Ángel was still all stiff but he didn't want to chance stretching. If he started ripping skin and bleeding in front of the outsiders, things might go downhill pretty fast. "You're after our water, right?"

"Are you sure we can trust this thing?" The goggles one looked a little skeptical, shifting uneasily on their feet. They all backed up, turning into a blur of colour in Ángel's terrible vision.

"He's barely standing," the leader said. "I think we can take him if he goes rogue."

"We could take the whole wretched colony, don't be an idiot," the blue haired one said, jamming his gun painfully between Ángel's shoulder blades. Ángel wasn't afraid of them, but that was just uncalled for. And _uncomfortable_. He started walking, unprompted, but the gun didn't go away.

"You think any of these freaks feel anything," Goggles asked as they passed through the rows of solar panels, leading Ángel along as they talked about him like he wasn't right there in front of them. People were looking up from their chairs and mattresses, making sympathetic noises as the group passed them by.

"We feel things," Ángel replied, annoyed at being treated like he was invisible. "We're just not scared of much."

The pressure on the gun intensified. "Would you be scared if I blasted a hole through your chest?"

"Wouldn't be the first time one of your kind did something like that," Ángel said simply, voice totally neutral. "I wouldn't care, either. The dead are more at peace."

The blue haired outsider scoffed, like that was just simply the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "Yeah, I'd be doing you a favour right?"  

Ángel didn't say anything to that. He really wasn't afraid of dying, either, so no matter the outcome, he'd be fine with it. He had friends who had been shot in the head by outsiders when they came by looking for water- Clover was the only one he remembered the name of, out of all of them. She came by his dreams sometimes, the ones where he was standing at a crossroads. She'd stand on the other side of the road, telling him all about different parts of the desert she'd seen. Others came by too, enough that Ángel wasn't afraid of being struck down.

As a nobody, Ángel wasn't really afraid of anything. Losing most of who he was meant he wasn't the scared little boy he used to be. He never screamed anymore, never cried and never hid himself away as the world crashed around him like the newcomers at the colony.

He'd be fine.

The outsiders talked among themselves as he lead them down the well-worn path, but he didn't care to listen to whatever it was they were saying. Walking was exhausting enough on its own- doing anything like this was exhausting, especially during the day. Ángel was annoyed more than he was afraid of the outsiders, for coming here to his territory and making threats and fucking up his day and his high.

Nobody in the colony ever bothered anybody. They kept to themselves, did their own thing, never hurt a soul in their time there. That didn't stop people from barging in and taking advantage of them- people who knew nothing about them, nothing about the way they live. Ángel needed it to stop.  

"Any of you got names?" Might as well be polite with the people who could kill him without blinking.

"Mongoose," the leader said, gesturing at her blue haired demon of a companion and the goggled gremlin behind her. "Pit Viper, Starboy."

Did the outsiders ever have normal names? Ángel tried to look back again, only to have Pit Viper jam the gun insistently into his spine. _Ow_.

"I have a question," he said, a few moments of uncomfortable silence later. "Why are you all such awful people?"  

"Who the fuck do you think you are, zombie boy," Pit Viper snarled in his ear, as Mongoose made a noncommittal noise. Ángel made a face and leaned his head away from where he just felt the demon's breath against his face. 

"I'm a person," Ángel told him. "We're all people. I know that's a hard concept for you to grasp." 

"Are you really? Like, a person, I mean," Starboy said from somewhere far behind them. 

Ángel didn't know how to respond to that. There was a difference between being nobody and not being a _person_. Ángel was always a nobody, but he was usually a person. Sometimes he didn't _feel_ like a person who had ever existed at all. It was the worst when he was days into his high, when time was dripping through his fingers like melted crayons and the colours were dancing in front of his eyes and staining his skin. Sometimes when he was floating through space like that, when he could see the entire universe, it felt like the only thing keeping him on Earth was his stupid body. He always hated it, and it just kept getting worse.

But as much as he thought it might be okay if one of these outsiders shot him in the head, the promise of something better that was always there at the edges of his mind kept Ángel thinking straight.   

"I'm real," was all he said, since those sentiments were far too complicated to share. "The people folks like you come and kill when you're bored or not getting your way are real, too." 

Pit Viper opted to ignore that completely. Of course. "Why'd you leave the city anyways? I mean, if you were just gonna give up and lie here day in and day out like a fuckin' junkie?"

Ángel shrugged at that, ignoring the sting in his shoulders. He turned his face up to the sun as he mulled the question over in his mind. Maybe it was _genetic_. Maybe he was always meant to find a way to be as sick as his parents were, even if he was never a junkie in the city. He never touched a single pill, like all the adults in his life were warning him not to, in case he got sick like his parents. He urged his brother to do the same. Looking back, medication might have helped them deal with the things that happened when they were carted around, and when they were split up. Things might have been easier.

Maybe that was a bad call on his part. Maybe that was why Ángel had ended up like this.

"Well I mean, we can't all be pillars of strength and resistance like you thugs. Fighting the good fight! Stealing from the sick and helpless and shooting them in their sleep! You know, the shit heroes get up to." And that shut Pit Viper up, somehow. Ángel allowed himself to be pleased.

It was quiet again. The only thing breaking through the shuffling of their footsteps was the sound of whatever Mongoose was humming.  

“What’s it like? You know. Living like this,” Mongoose said after a while. Obviously, that was something on her mind.

Ángel didn’t really want to talk to these people, but boredom was starting to eat at the corners of his consciousness. It was a dangerous feeling, made him do stupid impulsive things.

“What’s it like where you are,” he asked her instead, because if he answered they were all just going to antagonize him further.

“We’re coming from Bat City,” Mongoose said, after a moment of contemplation. Explained all the white she was wearing, at least. Everyone knew black was the best colour to be wearing out in the desert. Attracted the sun. “Got holed up there for a bit, on a recruitment mission. But we’re back now. We’re a whole community out here, have been since the wars.”

Surprising. Ángel didn’t know a lot about the wars, only that Lorelei talked about them sometimes when she was feeling chatty. There were a few people in the colony who had been around since then, and it was always easy to tell who, because they were the ones who spent the most time staring blankly at the sky, like it was going to give them answers. They were the ones who woke up screaming at night, who needed the most time to check out so they could forget.

Sometimes the strange woman who passed through Ángel’s dreams at the crossroads told him things that had happened in the wars, but he never remembered specifics when he woke up. Just that they were awful.

“What do you call people like me,” Ángel asked, because he’d always wanted to know.

“Waveheads,” Mongoose said after a calculated pause.

“Roadkill,” Pit Viper added.

Waveheads. Made sense. Ángel was going to tell Lorelei about that when he got back. She might get a kick out of it.

He almost got distracted and wandered off the path, even though the way to the fridge was well worn and fairly obvious. Realistically, the outsiders could have gotten there themselves. If a wavehead who was high could make it without wandering into the desert, surely a level headed traveller could pick their way there?  

"Where does the water even come from?" Starboy was mumbling behind him somewhere.

"Magic," Ángel replied without a hint of irony, because that was what Lorelei told him. The spirits talked about it sometimes too, laid it out for him. The magic in the city had been drowned out by electricity, but out in the desert it ran rampant. IT made things like the fridge possible.   

"Fuck, zombie boy, the sun scrambled your brain up real good huh," Pit Viper was laughing, but Ángel wasn't bothered. It was on them if they wanted to be disrespectful to the spirits. Pit Viper was the one who'd get hit with a streak of bad luck until he could get himself back in the spirits' good books.

"My brain is fine," Ángel told him, though he wasn't really sure if that was true. "I remember where I came from,t hat's all I need." 

“You’re from the city, right? Don’t know why you’d wanna remember anything like that,” Mongoose said, somewhat wistfully.

That was it, right? Ángel didn't want to forget about his brother. For every rapidly fading rotten memory he had there were three good ones of his brother, of what he was like. Maybe now some of the memories were made up, but Ángel didn't care about reality anymore. So long as he never forgot his bother, who was the _real_ angel out of the two of them. That wasn't his name.

Ángel didn't remember his name. 

"You have to take the bad with the good," he told Mongoose. "I don't bother with bad memories anymore. It seems too far away." 

They stopped listening to him then, going back to talking about things he didn't care about. So Ángel walked along, going through the realest memories he could dredge up to keep himself amused until they made it to the base of the steep incline leading up to the fridge. 

The outsiders crowed with joy and raced right up as Ángel struggled. It had been a really long time since Ángel had had to make a run there- everyone had been leaving him alone since Clover had died. Maybe they thought he was close to her. Maybe he had been. 

The fridge didn't look all that different from the last time he was here. A beat up white appliance that didn't belong out in the middle of the desert. It was all covered in crayon scribbled noted held there by colourful alphabet letters.

Things like _Meet us at Jimmy's!-Clare_

_Trike 4 sale see 2-e 4 details_

_whoever stole my pain is gettn their ass kicked_

_GOD HELP THE OUTCASTS!_

_outside FUCK UR HOUSE 2 p.m three days be there r b²_

_DJ WUZ HERE LOL_

Starboy shoved Ángel out of the way and the words got too blurred to read. Ángel went and sat himself down at the side of the fridge, settling down in the shade. The outsiders were babbling excitedly but Ángel was too drained to care.

"DJ Hot Chimp? I thought she bit it! Oh man, roadkill, you didn't tell me hotshots come here!" Pit Viper had found his humour, apparently. "Shit, fuck, an honest to god _Mad Gear concert_ , Goose! Ain't that jake?"

"Can we just get what we came for and go?" Mongoose seemed nervous all of a sudden. Places with high concentrations of spirits or magic made people who weren't in tune with stuff like that nervous, the Witch had told Ángel once. This place wasn't a good one to be if you were on the spirit's bad side. It was practically humming with magic, something Ángel could feel under his fingers.

He'd lost himself in the sensation when another shock of cold jarred him back into the present. He stared up at Pit Viper though his dripping hair, frowning. The outsider was in total hysterics.

"Thanks a bunch, roadkill." he was saying, crouching down and getting right up in Ángel's face. "We like, owe you one or whatever." 

Before Ángel could start getting skeptical about his sudden change of heart, Pit Viper was kissing him, and all Ángel could do was sit there. It had been a long time since anyone had kissed him, and Ángel had never really had a nice kiss in his life, but this was definitely one of the worse situations. Pit Viper tasted like cough syrup and dust and it was obvious he was doing this out of malice, like almost everyone before him.

He was doing it because Ángel couldn't say no, couldn't stop him, and he felt something hot and aching in the pit of his stomach as Pit Viper grinned against his mouth, laughing when Ángel shut his eyes tight and turned his head. Shame burned through him as he tried to shut down his emotions, fighting off the swell of nasty city memories that came bubbling up.

"Hit us up if you're still alive anytime soon," Pit Viper told him, with a sunny salute as he backed up, twirling on his heel and marching after his friends. That was it. They were _leaving_ him here, as outsiders did. Awful, _awful_ outsiders who would never understand anything, who existed just to make Ángel's life miserable.

His face was hot and his eyes were stinging, like maybe he'd cry if he could remember the last time he actually drank anything. They left him here, and now he wouldn't be able to make it back to the colony until morning, far too exhausted to even get to his feet and get water from the fridge. He was shaking and helpless and stranded here until he could try again tomorrow.  

That was life.    

When he'd finally reigned his emotions in, Ángel flopped down on the ground on his back, draping an arm over his eyes as the sun beat down. The sun made him feel better- made _all_ of them feel better, at the colony. They joked about being plants all the time, which Ángel liked because his brother used to say things like that. That Ángel was growing too fast since he was always taller, that he grew like a plant.

He lost himself in those memories. There was one that he could always see, if he closed his eyes and thought hard enough. One of the worse houses they'd been at, with the sister who always dressed him in her clothes even when he'd made it perfectly clear he didn't want that, and made him be the princess in all the games she made him play, kissing him when he didn't want it.

He and his brother had had their own room in that house. They'd never _had_ their own room, not in any of the places they'd been moved around to before. They always had to share with bratty kids who were jealous of their being there, who'd never known a single thing about real suffering. Happy kids, who were cruel and unforgiving. And as bad as that adopted sister had been, they'd had their own space. Their own little world. Their parents would complain a lot that they never left it, that they shouldn't keep the door locked so much, that they should go out and play with the others. But that was the safest Ángel had felt since they'd been on the streets on their own.

Even the streets weren't so bad when he had his brother with him. They'd been kicked out of the house when his brother found out what their sister was doing to Ángel, pinning her down and pulling her hair until she was wailing.

He was always the braver one.

Ángel wasn't sure how much time passed, until the orange glow on the other side of his eyelids started to dim. Even so, he was still caught up in the past, hiding under the covers with a stolen flashlight and scribbling stories into a ratty notebook pilfered from another house they'd gotten stuck in. Ángel was the storyteller of the two, and his brother made things real.  

Nothing felt real in the moment. 

Ángel opened his eyes when the light had faded completely, and the sky above him was utterly terrifying and awe inspiring all at the same time.

Back at the colony the sky was blocked out by solar panels sometimes, and the range of tall orange rocks that stood above them. Seeing this much space at once was a bit frightening, even if he wasn't scared of anything anymore. It reminded him of all the possibilities out there.

This much space didn't exist in the city, so much space drove him forward when he escaped, until he stumbled and fell and refused to get up from where he lay.  

"Hey," he told the stars. Lorelei had told him that they were very good messengers, and that during the wars people would use them to send well wishes to people far away. They always knew where to send your messages. "How are you?" 

Lorelei had also told him to have someone in his mind when he tried to send messages, unless someone random would get them. Ángel tried again, keeping his brother on his mind as he talked. "I miss you. We never finished our adventure." 

The one they were writing. They were pirates, feared by everyone on the mainland and the sea alike. Ángel used to dream of being someone fearsome, like his brother, being able to transform himself into a force of nature like that, one that would make anyone who ever hurt him cower. It never happened, but he still thought about it sometimes. 

"I hope you miss me too? Not that I want you to be sad, but I want you to think about me. I hope you haven't forgotten me. I hope you got out of there."

If anyone could get themselves out of the city, it was his brother. He'd gotten them out of more awful situations than Ángel could count.

Lying there, Ángel was at a loss for words, lost in the vast expanse of infinity above him. "I love you," was the only other thing he could think to say, as the stars flashed and twinkled up above, and the moon was so bright and hopeful that he allowed himself to smile, closing his eyes. Maybe he'd die here. Maybe he _was_ dying here. Maybe this was the sort of peace that only dying could bring.

When the Witch came by, Ángel wasn't quite sure if he was awake or dreaming. It was hard to tell sometimes, but when he opened his eyes, there she was. He barely had the strength to lift his head as she walked- floated, rather- closer, looking down at him. Her eyes weren't visible in the mask she was always wearing, just to gaping holes in her skull like the void, and a carved eye on her forehead that glowed a faint violet like the rest of her.

"Hello again," Ángel said, cheerfully as he could muster. "Am I dying?"  

"All our conversations," the Witch said, bowing over him with her bandaged hands on her hips. Or, where her hips would be, buried under her thick cloak of raven feathers. "All we've been through, and you still take me as an ill omen?"

"To be fair, I haven't had many good omens in my life." It came out more self-pitying than Ángel meant it to, so he sighed when she cocked her head to the side like a bird. "Sorry. How have you been? I haven't seen you in a while."

"I've been here and there." She didn't sit in the dirt, but she crouched by his side, cloak sweeping through the dust as she ran her fingers softly over the rough skin on his face. It was definitely one of the more positive touches he'd received that day, and Ángel closed his eyes. "What are you doing out here? You're far from home." 

"That's not my home," Ángel told her, though he wasn't really sure where his home was anymore. He never really had one to begin with, just made wherever he went with his brother a home. 

"Where's your home then, hmmm?" The Witch brushed his greasy hair off his face. "Shall I help you get there?"

"Don't suppose you could help me get back to my brother." He laughed weakly, at himself, something that made the Witch flinch back. She seemed confused. "If you could get me back to the colony, that might be a little more realistic." 

"You do not believe you will see your family again? You don't know what the future holds, Ángel Godinez." 

His last name took him off guard. It was something he hadn't heard in a very long time, something that made him miss his family a lot worse. 

"I imagine it will look a lost like my past," he said quietly. "And my present. I don't think I'll be going anywhere anytime soon? Unless you really are here to kill me." 

"I don't kill. I'm a guide. Get those ridiculous thoughts out of your head." She poked him in the cheek, not enough to hurt. "I show people what they need to see! I help them get to where they need to go. That's my job. And yours is to get out of the dirt and start becoming the person you're meant to be."

She helped him up to his feet, and Ángel felt good enough to actually move. Magic really _was_ something. Bit if he wasn't sure if he was in a dream before, he was certain now. As they walked, the sky got brighter and brighter and the terrain got a little more strange until they were in his familiar dreamscape, at the tower near the crossroads where he he talked to the spirits. 

"Why do you keep taking me here?" He squinted as he looks around, as the Witch tutted at him. 

"That's no attitude to have about it, Ángel Godinez." She let go of his hand, making her way over to the tower. "This is an honour."

"I don't even know what that means," Ángel mumbled. 

"And I can't tell you! Guess you'll have to keep yourself alive and figure it out, huh?" The Witch stood before the tower, looking up. It was a huge structure, made entirely of television sets. Some of them were broken or displaying static, all of them spray painted with bright colours and names and swear words. 

Every time he'd been there, the place had weirded Ángel out. Usually he could only come here in dreams, but even his subconscious could pick up the thrum of magic beneath his feet when he was there. He sat himself down on one of the broken TV sets jutting out of the ground, watching as the witch checked one of the sets that was actually displaying something. There was a kid there on the screen, a sad one in Bat City whites and glasses. He was sitting in a medical facility- obvious by the big red cross in behind him, the only thing with any colour in it. 

 _He's going to make it, Olivia, you have nothing to worry about,_ someone offscreen was saying, and okay, maybe Ángel pegged them wrong and they' weren't a boy. Ángel watched the person's face twitch, forcing itself into a smile as they nodded. The person offscreen was saying more, but it was drowned out in static as the Witch moved away.

"What is this place, again?" Ángel followed her movement with his eyes. "Like, what's it for?" 

"This is a crossroads, of sorts, if you wanted to give it a name. Not quite reality, not quite the afterlife. A place people may come to learn and to teach." She tutted and shook her head sadly at one of the broken sets before moving on. "Far as travellers like yourself come, I do believe we'll have company, soon. 

"Yeah?"

"There are others who are allowed to visit this place, on occasion." The Witch looked back at him. "Perhaps I should let you meet them."

"I think I've met enough people today, thank you," Ángel said, shifting his attention to another one of the screens. It was displaying another person, staring down their reflection and in obvious distress. He'd been crying, eyes red and makeup smudged all over his angular face, scissors in his hand. Ángel could practically feel his desperation and his loneliness and his need to feel _something_ through the screen, as he took a deep breath and took the scissors to his hair. 

"Networking is important, you know," the Witch said, after they'd spent a couple of tense minutes watching in horrified silence. "You'll want allies when your life starts over again, Ángel Godinez." 

"I don't know." Ángel didn't know what she meant. He was pretty sure that his life was still happening, thank you, and he didn't need any outsiders coming in and treating him rotten. He was fine with the people in the colony for now. 

"You have very little trust in people," the Witch said, suddenly right there behind him. "Not to say it isn't warranted."

"I feel like today's a good example of why putting faith in people is a bad idea," Ángel grumbled. "But that's just me." 

"You have not met many good people. I understand that. But you will know a great many more in time," the Witch said, and maybe she was smiling behind the mask. "For you now, it's merely a matter of waiting, Ángel Godinez."

Ángel wanted to tell her that she was spouting nonsense, that he'd been waiting a long time now and nothing had gotten any better. At the colony, things might have been getting worse, even. Maybe he'd felt more awake today than he had in... however long he'd been out here, but that wasn't enough on its own to win his optimism back.

When he looked up again, the witch was gone. On the screen, the guy was burying his face against a pretty raven-haired droid's shoulder, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. When he looked away, there was someone else at the corner of his vision. And taking into consideration everything that had happened today, Ángel took a chance and got up from where he sat, starting to walking towards them. Miraculously, they stayed put. A swell of hope rose up in Ángel's chest and he tried not to seem too desperate as he hurried towards them, hoping and praying that he'd know them when he got there.

He didn't know the kid that was standing there on the road, grinning at him. It was a girl- a young one, only tall enough to come up to his waist. She had curly hair mostly jammed under a strange modified aviator's cap, dark skin, a sunny smile that made Ángel feel a little better about her not being his brother. She had a little boom box in her hands, and she bounced on her toes when he smiled at her.

"Hi," Ángel said when she failed to. The girl didn't reply, just stood there and smiled at him. "Hello? Can you hear me?" 

She nodded gravely. 

"Do you talk?"

And the girl shook her head. Well, okay. Ángel could still work with that. He was about to say something else when the girl shifted her grip on the radio and grabbed his hand, tugging him along. Maybe it was a bad idea, but Ángel trusted her enough to lead him to where he needed to be.

He woke suddenly in his own bed with the sun in his blurry eyes and no recollection of where the girl had brought him in his dreams. It was jarring, and slightly upsetting, but something was sticking out more than any of that. For the first time in a very long time Ángel felt like something wrong, that a part of him was missing.    

Like maybe he didn’t want to lie here and die.

One day at a time, though, he told himself as he rolled back over and closes his eyes.


End file.
